Voxativ Ampeggio Speaker Review

Conclusion

This pair of Ampeggio speakers left my house, went back to Apple Valley, CA, and were shipped to their new owner Rick Schultz of High Fidelity Cables. I have great respect for Rick as a cable designer and for his ability to hear what sounds like real music. He put the speakers in a bigger room than mine and Rick is very pleased with their sound. I mention this because I could hear such potential for greatness in this speaker, but never felt I was getting the most out of them in my room.

Still, the biggest difference between the Ampeggios and the other single-driver speakers I talked about above, seems to me to come as much from their cabinet design as it does from the design of their drivers. Voxativ has chosen to use thicker and denser cabinet walls than any of the others. A simple, classic knuckle-rap test will tell you these cabinets are deader than the other single-driver speakers I have talked about. They are also much deader than Audio Note’s two-way speakers. Like all speakers of the dead cabinet design philosophy that I have heard, they just seem to have to work harder to get the sound out of the cabinet and into the room. This is not a sound that I have come to expect from high efficiency speaker designs. I should admit that this is the design that most high-end speaker designers choose and there is no reason that this design should not be used with high-efficiency speakers.

I have now heard these speakers at three different audio shows and in my room. They sounded decidedly different in each venue. At all three shows and my house the Voxativ speakers sounded more refined, more under control, and smoother than most other high-efficiency, single-driver speakers I have heard. Many audiophiles and music lovers will like this about them, but to me they are just a little more controlled than real life.

So in conclusion, I am somewhat conflicted about these speakers. There is no doubt they are built to the highest quality, they can hold their own with any high-end speakers from any high-end company I have seen. Without a doubt they make a significant step forward in getting rid of the shout found in most older Lowther designs, but I personally wish they could have done this without losing the magical aliveness of the most recent single-driver speakers I have had in my home.